Glossolalia

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[glossolaliaflash]

Sundays on the Tennessee by Jonathan Kosik

Nothing good comes out of this river. Heavy steel killed this bend in the Tennessee. My father pours two bags of ice into the fish hold in the middle of the boat. He sinks a case of Coors Light into the ice, two cans at a time. We don’t keep the fish; my father throws his catch back. It’s just time in a boat, floating, pulling fish from the river next to the sagging frames of steel mills where the clouds of metal dust and slag flushed, for years, down worn, red banks and into the water. My father worked these mills, when their furnaces burned strong and bright orange throughout the night, when the glow of man-made lava poured from giant ladles and filled molds for railroad tracks. My father and I brought home fish from the river then. When we fished close to the locks, and my father told me “they pulled the stopper” when the water lowered for barges moving up river. When my father’s arms were rigid with muscle, when he first took me out in the boat and taught me to hook bait and cast close to the shore. I lost five crickets off the curve of my hook in as many minutes. My father tossed me into the current. “If you can’t learn to hook a cricket, this is the closest you’ll come to catching fish.”

My father digs into the ice and pulls two cans out. The cans drip sweat in this heat. The ssshhh-thwack slices the air behind me as he flips both tabs. He presses a cold can against the back of my arm; I jump, sending the boat rocking. “You’re going to scare the goddamn fish,” he says. He takes a drink. I keep my hat pulled low. The bandana filled with ice chips and tied around my neck steadily drips down my back. It will be dry soon. I won’t fill it with ice again. My father will be watching. He is unyielding in this kind of heat. “Must have caught the worst of his mother,” I once heard him say to Roy Hapburn as they drank beers on the back porch and cleaned fish they’d caught in Alabama.

It’s just a game. I watch my bobber. The white top rests on the surface of the water. The bobber dips and jumps to the surface. The tip of my rod bends to the water. I pray that my hook has caught a stopper on the bottom of this rusted river. My bobber is dragged under the surface, and as I fight with the reel my father springs to his feet. The weight of his steps pitches the boat side to side. Water slops against the aluminum hull. I feel his shadow cool the back of my neck. I imagine his arms around me, his hands on mine, his breath heavy with excitement. One strong tug, we could pull the stopper free from this riverbed.

***

About the Author Jonathan Kosik Born: Chattanooga, Tennessee Now Resides: House of the Mouse (Orlando, Florida) Bio: I teach film production classes. Writing with pencils hurts so good. My 1979 Honda CB750 is one hot lady. So is my wife. I want to be Mad Max. I write in my garage, not all the time, but a lot. I have a twin. Tennessee is beautiful. I live elsewhere, I've lived many elsewheres: once in a trailer on a farm in Georgia, once in San Jose, once in Lexington, Ky—we followed a preacher, you get it. I enjoy IPA's. Chocolate chip cookies rock the Casbah. Ethiopian food is the bomb. My 68 Tele Bass has some songs in it. My P-bass has more. I still shoot film. Come hang out with me. We toss horse shoes in my back yard. This story first appeared on Clapboard House.

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image by Daxius.

[glossolaliaflash]

The Hummingbird by Robert Hill Long

How the hummingbird got into the attic he didn’t know. All day at the desk rewriting a single foolish page, he’d mistaken that vibrato for something within—onset of tinnitus, a Cassandra vein in his temple forewarning a stroke. In the ashes of afternoon, he pictured an angel of perfection, tiny as a needle injecting the word No through the top of his skull.

The ocean outside was mantled in fog as though the sky could not stop lighting one cigarette after another in order to forget that its job was to deliver clarities blue as a god’s eye. Beneath the fog, barn swallows veered, sparrows hovered and pounced in the grass. Whatever had gone wrong with him did not spoil how the crow furled wings like an umbrella and strolled toward yesterday’s picnic crumbs, how gulls hung in the offshore wind like a long suspended chord in a Bach toccata.

The thought of Bach pushed him away from his ashtray full of crushed words: he wanted to hear that toccata and fugue—if only to deaden the vibrato wire in his skull—but it lay in the attic. In the hall, he lowered collapsible stairs (the gulls resolved into the melody line of the fugue, cascading away) and climbed: unreliable steps to a permanent cedar twilight. Here, a box of anniversaries of the dead; there, a century of moth-eaten linen. Shelves of wind-up tin toys, dolls whose porcelain heads lolled in a choral stare.

Stowed beneath the attic’s end-window, the phonograph bin echoed the placement of his desk one floor below. As he squatted to flip through the albums, an iridescence caught his eye. On the sill, outspread wings, a needle-tipped head of emerald and garnet bent away from the glass. There had been an angel; it had called out overhead. He stood briefly—to accept the silent charge against him—then knelt, to balance each rigid wing on his index fingers. Then he rose and backed toward the trapdoor where, if the world were just, he would plummet and break his neck. But he managed this backward pas de deux down the steps, the dead bird before his eyes like an iridescent chalice.

In his studio, he rotated slowly to show the hummingbird what he had done with its life: ashtray and scattered books, cheap prints on the wall. Then lowered himself to the rug, and stretched on his side, the hummingbird by his head. No Bach now, no ocean of smoke, no work to ruin, no consoling acre of birds. Only this note, repeated inside each time he blinked until the window went black. Once his arms and legs had gone to sleep, he recognized the note’s irregular signature.

It was his heart—a little faster than the last time he’d checked, more syncopated. Probably it was the cigarettes, but he hoped without being able to see a thing that the hummingbird had found its way to some nectar in the cage of his bones.

***

About the Author Robert Hill Long Born: Wilmington, NC USA Now Resides: Eugene OR USA Online: www.roberthilllong.wordpress.com Bio: Robert Hill Long’s books (1987-2010) include The Power to Die, The Work of the Bow, The Effigies, The Kilim Dreaming, and The Wire Garden. He has been recently awarded second fellowships by the NEA and the Oregon Arts Commission. Recent work appears (or soon will) in 2River View, Cirque, Dead Mule, Diagram, Gray Sparrow, In Posse, Los Angeles Review, North Carolina Literary Review, Sentence, The Other Journal, The Pedestal, The Writing Disorder, and Unsplendid. MSS. seeking publishers: Hello Hell (prose poems), The Republic of Robinson (verse bio of jazz guitarist), Aftermathematics (elegies).

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image by jayantib. 

[glossolaliaflash]

Quee by John E. Branscum

We all loved dogs. After all, a kid without a dog is like a kid without a heart. Beagles and Labradors and Cocker Spaniels, and the mutts of course -- the unlikely couplings of Chihuahuas and Rottweilers, Poodles and Dobermans. Then one morning, a few days after the last day of school, we find she who belongs to no one -- sleeping on the porch of the abandoned house at the end of the street. She’s golden with glossy eyes like a sick child’s. Her right front paw is wounded so that she limps -- tap, tap. We approach her bent over, hands extended. She does not growl but simply watches.

“What is it?” I say to Tony. “Girl or boy?”

He pushes his hand at her and lets her sniff. When he sees that she’s accepted him, he drops to his knees and looks beneath her. “Girl. Pregnant.” He points to the pink grab of her swollen nipples.

That night, we petition our parents to add her to our respective menageries. But once we admit that she is pregnant, the answer is no, no, of course not. We do not understand the ways of the world, they say, the dangers of proliferating species. We don’t mention her again. When they ask about her, we say we found someone to take her. Secretly though, we rebel.

We take turns according to a pact that is never spoken but comes into being out of the force of its own rightness. We each donate an old blanket or pair of pants or pillow to make her a nest inside the old house. We feed her like a queen. A quarter of a package of bacon, filched cans of dog food, crackers, steak. Queen, we call her, Queenie, and sometimes, foreshortened, Quee.

She doesn’t move much when we visit except to walk circles or to pace. Her head is heavy with alien thoughts. She doesn’t show whether she is happy to see us or sad to see us go. Still, in awe of her swelling belly, we pledge our lives. There’s sightings sometimes when she limps out to explore. We deny them. Say that she is long gone. When asleep, we dream of her pale belly and each of us hanging from her nipples like bats.

The end of summer and the heat grows half-hearted. One day, we go to see her and she growls. There is yelping and wiggling from beneath her belly. A blind face pokes from the sleeve of my father’s shirt, another from the hem of Tommy’s mother’s dress. We stand back and gaze, hearts beating, mouths dry, grinning drop-jawed and nodding at each other. “Yeah! Oh Yeah!” We shout and slap each other’s back.

Three weeks later, Quee disappears. We don’t know where. The puppies are still there though, eyes newly opened, jaws goggling at the world. We look for her body. Of course, we don’t find it. We didn’t expect to. This is after all a miracle.

***

About the Author John E. Branscum Born: Indio, California, USA Now Resides: Tusculum, Tennessee Online: www.facebook.com/people/John-Branscum/100000536720756 Bio: John Branscum hails from a long line of migrant labor with semi-permeable membranes. He was once mistakenly arrested for attempting to rob a convenience store, and likes to get lost in foreign countries on purpose. He’s published work in such magazines as the North American Review and won such honors as the Ursula Leguin Award for Imaginative Fiction. He’s just finished the darkly comic redneck spiritual memoir, One in the Head, and is shopping it around, as well as trying to pimp it to Oprah. A former Cajun cook, he now joyfully toils as an Assistant Professor of English at Tusculum College.

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image by ByStarrlight.

[glossolaliaflash]

Chocolate Milk for Miles! by Andrew Battershill

Derek was with his friend Annabel, drinking by a river. Annabel was about knee-deep in the water. She tripped slightly and as she righted herself an expanding swirl of silt rose to the surface. Derek was sitting higher up on the hill. He had an umbrella suspended in a tree branch above him. Rain fell heavily into the river but only the occasional drop made it through the canopy of the trees.

Annabel spun her hand around at the wrist. “I had six nightmares last night, and none of them had an arc.” She stepped out of the river, almost slipping on a rock.

“I don’t remember my dreams.”

She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to the side. “What’s the last dream you remember?”

Derek let his head droop to his chest.

“It was quite a while ago now. And in the dream I went to the fridge and there were no eggs left. That was the dream. I was out of eggs.”

“You had a fridge dream too!? That’s awesome! Three days ago I had one where I looked in the fridge and there were rows and rows of chocolate milk containers, all lined up. They filled the whole thing.”

“The only other one I remember, I bought shoes and the girl at the counter gave me my change in belt buckles. Three metal tubs full of belt-buckles.”

Annabel was putting on her shoes; she slapped her calf three times. “Chocolate milk for miles!” She laughed, bent forwards, and then moved back sharply, letting her left shoe slip out of her hand and into the water. She pulled it out before anywhere but the toe got wet.

He craned his head around the outside of the umbrella and looked up. It had stopped raining, but a drop of water fell from a leaf and hit him next to his right eye.

They climbed the bank together and when they reached the gravel path Annabel skipped ahead. She spun around to face him, lost her balance and fell into a sitting position. A strand of her bangs fell across her face, and without moving any other part of her body she blew upwards and got the hair out of her eyes.

They walked down the path and reached a house. The house was old and made of brick. Accordion music started rolling out the window, one note at a time, which was both incredible and the only way it could. He looked up at the window and saw that the accordion player had a pet crow (it was an eastern European crow, which meant that it looked like a crow, but covered in grey paint). Annabel bumped into Derek, spinning him around at the shoulder. He heard her say: “I wish each person had a different number of bones.”

***

About the Author Andrew Battershill Born: Vancouver, BC Now resides: Victoria, BC Online: www.jotcamp.com Bio: Andrew Battershill is the co-editor of Dragnet Magazine online. He was the winner of the 2010 Irving Layton Award for Fiction, and his winning entry will be featured in the upcoming issue of The Headlight Anthology. His work is currently appearing in issue 2 of Burner Mag.

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image by nilgunkara.

[glossolaliaflash]

The End of a Season by Kim Connington

It's late September, past cottage season. No whining buzz of boats on the lake, no shrieking children splashing in the shallows. The fall migration brings a cacophony of birds and waterfowl but since early this morning there has been silence. A stark contrast to the fury of the breakfast table argument. Her words were harsh, accusing, biting. I yelled back, inches from her face. Her sweeping curtain of dark hair falls forward, hiding her eyes. The same argument every day for three days, three months, three years. The lake soothes us; waves wash over her words, soften and blur the edges.

I row the flat bottom boat through shallow water in the secluded bay on the west end of the lake. Bulrushes root in sediment; their foliage stands above the surface in stiff spires. Among the yellow ochre leaves drift free-floating plants. Roots entwined in a tangled mass, they float in a dense carpet. The canopy conceals the trailing leaves and branches of submerged weeds. Anything caught in this underwater jungle would not be given up. Gliding into deeper water, I lift the oars and shake the tape grass and algae from them. I look at my hands. Man's hands but soft and boyish. Until this morning, I hadn't done much of anything physical.

Leaving the yellow leaves of the aspen and birch that surround the bay for the forever green of the pine trees that cling to the stony outcrops, I turn left to follow the rocky, northern shore back to the dock. I stay close to the shore to avoid the pull of the drift. The rock hangs over the lake; bulbous shapes atop sheer stone walls that disappear into the water. Here the water appears black. I don't want to look over the side of the boat. I imagine all sorts of things beneath the surface. Body parts - limbs, torsos and skulls - rising to the surface - the black water amber against white skin. Mossy green branches and tree trunks lie half-submerged. The curve of a trunk reminds me of the curve of her hip when she lies on her side in sleep. My hands looked rugged against the taut, smooth skin of her neck.

I glance over the side. Stonewort and musk grass move under the water, slow dancing in the wind-driven current. I imagine her hair flowing, not yet tangled.

***

About the Author Kim Connington Born: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Now Resides: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Bio: Kim has lived from coast to coast in Canada and was lucky to have spent four years living in Germany and travelling extensively throughout Europe. She is an artist, whose work has sold in Europe and Canada. This is Kim’s first publication. She is in the final editing stage of her first novel and eagerly anticipating beginning her second. She believes encounters with people and nature find their way into her work as a writer and an artist.

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image by PurpleHeartIvy.

[glossolaliaflash]

A Design for Life by Emma Jones

Raining again. I can’t remember the last time I left my umbrella at home. Never mind, I’m spending most of my day indoors and have much more pressing worries at the hospital. The traffic light turns green. So many decisions, so many varieties of perfection. Like a kid in a candy store…

I want blonde hair, not too light, but more of a caramel colour with a slight wave that will drizzle itself over slim shoulders. Some blue eyes would match beautifully. My mother had blue eyes and almost jet black hair, very striking indeed, although a bit too cold for my liking.

A pedestrian crosses my path and I can’t help but notice her lips. No sign of collagen there. I prefer a much more prominent top lip but I very much like the natural colouring of hers, almost a purple-red, reminds me of beetroot. A great colour against her fair skin.

She strolls past my window and I glimpse her side profile. That nose is just too big for me. I want a petite one, perhaps with an ever-so-slight turn at the end. I’ll look at examples but I’m thinking along the lines of Julia Roberts’ shape. Apparently she has the traits and proportions of a perfect face. I must admit, she has aged very well, maybe I should enquire about wrinkle prevention. I’d be quite disappointed with crows feet at the age of forty. I’m already cursed with frown lines and have no interest in aging gracefully.

If my breasts slump any further they’ll be trailing the floor like the knuckles of a bloody orangutang. I want them smaller. A pert, palm-sized B, or C at the most. They would look ideal on a tall, slender frame. Not too tall though, that’s what stilettos are for; 5’6” to 5’9” would be ideal, so long as we can keep the feet dainty.

I pull into the car park of the fertility department. A perfect parking manoeuvre. I’ll keep that attribute thank you.

I walk towards the entrance as the clouds begin to part and the rain takes a coffee break. I think I’m finally prepared and decided on everything. Well… everything but a name for her.

***

About the Author Emma Jones Born: Pontypridd, Wales, UK Now Resides: Melbourne, Australia Online: www.emmajones.yolasite.com Bio: Emma Jones graduated in Law and is currently travelling the world with her backpack. Thanks to the ample amount of free time spent at airports, Emma is able to pursue her two favourite passions - writing and buying duty free goods. This story was first published in the Winter 2010-2011 issue of Adventures for the Average Woman.

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image by LonelyPierot.

[glossolaliaflash]

On Parmenter St. by Lenea Grace

“Where’s the parade, boys?” Jimmy’s scooping up the slush, as usual. I tell him nobody wants a goddamn slushie on a cloudy day, but he don’t listen. As usual.

“Haw. Haw. Joker.”

Fat Morty thinks Jimmy is a regular comedian. This guy. I tell you. It’s been fifty years of this and Morty’s still snorting when he laughs. This guy. If he weren’t my cousin, he’d be yours.

So we sit and take in the goddamn parade of every day goings on here on Parmenter St. Not because we want to, but because we have to. Because if we didn’t, Jimmy’d have no one to talk to. That’s what I tell my wife after breakfast. She don’t care, anyway, except she thinks I’m wasting away my golden years. Her words, not mine. She’s always wringing her hands on that ratty red and white apron. I tell her go buy yourself a new apron. I don’t need a new apron, she says, why don’t ya take me to Florida? And there’s that little dance she does, kind of like she’s tap-dancing, only she’s in bare feet and the floor is linoleum. I could kiss her.

But we’re not going to Florida. Not this year. She’s busy with the girls and the church, and I got Polcari’s. Always spend my mornings at Polcari’s before lunch at home. Sometimes she makes me a salami sandwich, or tuna fish. Or I’ll microwave the leftovers for both of us. And if I’ve been a real good boy, sometimes she makes me a man. Haw haw.

Nothing doing today on the street. Used to be there were kids, our kids, playing all the time. Sucking down those slushies on the sidewalks, in the alleys. Lots of young mothers, blurs of shopping bags and high heels. Not so much anymore. The neighborhood’s changing, my wife says. Why don’t we go to Florida? Now we watch the slick cars speed by with Fast Eddies behind the wheel. It’s the cocaine. Morty saw it on the TV.

So we change, we change, so what. Between Morty and my wife, you’d think the world was going to hell in a hand basket. But me, I keep drinking my coffee. I wave to the Fast Eddies. I smile at the girl that shakes her tooshie on the corner. And when Morty gives her crap about how this used to be a nice street, a family street, I just tell her,

“Honey, it’s 1982. Let it all hang out.”

***

About the Author Lenea Grace Born: Calgary, Alberta, Canada Now Resides: New York, New York, USA Online: www.leneagrace.blogspot.com Bio: Lenea Grace is a Canadian writer and avid kitchen-dancer. An MFA candidate at The New School, she resides in NYC. Her work has appeared in Grain, Event, ditch, and Gulper Eel magazines.

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image by SAMLIM.

[glossolaliaflash]

Til Next Year by Judith Mercado

Stuart walked out his front door. His olive corduroy slacks and dun-colored cable-knit sweater were as ordinary as any Fall day. Only the burnished red coat of the toy poodle scampering beside him indicated that this was someone worth noticing on Halloween, that most exotic of all holidays.

Everyone did notice. Green munchkin or desert soldier, each child walking past—or just as likely his adult chaperon—invariably cried out, “Oh, what a cool dog. What is he?”

Stuart never answered, but kept walking. Some might even say he was rude.

Not the red poodle. He wagged his tail and ran around the costumed kid or adult, until Stuart yanked him back without a word.

For twelve blocks in one direction and the same distance back, Stuart and his high-spirited dog gave homage to a holiday that both atheists and believers can agree to celebrate.

Then Stuart and his dog walked back in their front door. Stuart took off his cable-knit top, folded it neatly and made it snug between two faded cardboard hatboxes in the hallway closet shelf. He sat in front of the ebbing fire, called the dog to his lap, picked up his bourbon glass, and emptied it. “Til next year,” he said to his dog. “Next year, we shall join the parade again.” The dog wagged his tail and buried his snout into Stuart’s side.

***

About the Author Judith Mercado Born: Puerto Rico Now resides: Juno Beach, Florida Online: www.judithmercadoauthor.blogspot.com Bio: Judith Mercado’s multicultural fiction frequently explores conflicting religious perspectives, as well as tensions between the Latino and Anglo cultures. Sometimes her fiction simply examines the essential mystery of the human condition. Amazon.com selected her novel Choosing Sides as a quarterfinalist in its 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition. "Asunder," a short story, won the literary category of the 2010 Literary Lab Genre Wars competition. Her short stories have been published in Nassau Review, North Atlantic Review, and other reviews. Essays have been published in Latina Voices. Her novels await publication.

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image by Filmdirector.

[glossolaliaflash]

Some Night by Suzanne Bump

He was wagging his cigarette at its reflection in the tip jar, the cigarette blooming each time it tilted towards. The world through a fish-eye, Dave behind him at the grill looking miniature and fuzzy. He pulled himself up, glancing past the few empty tables and window-bar outside. Wind ripped up from the lake, fighting the snow that spun from streetlights.

“Alright, let’s close her up,” he said, standing there behind the counter. The streets were not deserted, the bars and restaurants doing brisk business with students and thirty-somethings like himself. Another world, behind the glass. He went out back, holding the door to let Dave out first, then shut out the lights and locked the cranky door.

Though he knew he couldn’t get his cigarette lit in the bone-chafing wind he tried anyway and failed. Once he got to the Volvo he started it up and lit his cigarette. Sarah had asked him not to smoke in the car, for the baby or something, though they both knew she just didn’t like him smoking. On the ride home he smoked with the window open, snow rearing at the windshield. Every night cars disappear the second you leave Burlington, tracks running dead in the middle of the highway.

His fourth cigarette he lit in the silent driveway, window still open and snow noisily falling into the car. Burning sound as he dragged. It piled up on the window sill at his upper-arm, each flake a moment or a thought, a day, a year. To him they were visible feelings of sameness. He sat with the nub in his hand. If he didn’t move he could almost not exist.

Inside Sarah slept and he tried, the baby sleeping in the other room. A whole country sleeping underneath the snow. Why this fantasy, always; a great Absence? With her back turned to him he watched the rise and fall of her side, him an observer of his own life, and this somehow comforting. Wave to yourself there behind the counter. Drive yourself to a grave and dump my body in. Forget. One more night.

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About the Author  Suzanne Bump Born: Dorchester, MA Now Resides: Hadley, MA Bio: I write after working the morning shift at the RMV to make my brain stop the numbers. The RMV gets all types. This is my first submission ever and my first published work.

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image by fahrmboy.

[glossolaliaflash]

Detour by Carey M. Adams

Looking back, you remember you were heading home but not where you had been. You remember that at some point, instead of turning off at the exit to head north, you took a detour into the city. Straight off, that little voice in your head spoke up, the one that nags at certain key points. You ignored it.

When he answered the door, you could tell he wasn’t happy to see you but you stayed anyway. Just to talk, you said.

It was nearly dark when the door closed behind you, when you realized you’d left your travel cup inside. The red one. Your favorite. But you were conscious of him, the other one, at home, waiting.

You drove along Route 1 lost in thought, still mostly back there, but far enough away from where you were going to worry about what you would say. About where that cup had gone.

The highway stretched north, nearly empty.

In the distance, a lone traffic light turned from green to yellow. You stepped on it to beat the light and you did beat it except all of a sudden the car shivered and you thought maybe you heard something. You glanced in the rear view mirror but there was nothing – just a vacant road. Then one more look. The traffic light, still red, was far away.

But as you drove, you couldn’t shake the idea that maybe there had been something. You thought, maybe a pothole. You wanted to stop but there was no place to pull over – no shoulder, no side road to turn in.

You thought maybe you could smell something. Something indefinable that seemed to emanate from the rear of the car. You thought, oh god, what if it had been a deer? Or a dog? Or…

You didn’t want to think it, but then you did.

You drove another mile, then two. Your hands shook badly as they gripped the steering wheel. You would have sworn the scent was growing stronger.

A sign for a car dealership popped into view.

You turned into the lot going forty and squealed to a stop. You left the door open. You had to know.

The right side of the car was in shadow. You bent down to run your fingers along the smooth metal above the tire when the other car shrieked into the lot. A low, red corvette. Its left headlight dangled from its socket. Even in the dark, the color gleamed. The driver wrenched open his door as the undamaged headlight shone on you like a beacon.

He came at you with menace in his eyes.

“What the fuck were you thinking lady?”

His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides as he stood over you and you had no doubt, then or now, that had you been a man -- or a woman less clearly lost -- he would have cut you down.

***

About the Author Carey M. Adams Born: Buffalo, NY Now resides: North of Boston, USA Online: www.anyforkintheroad.com Bio: Poet, fiction writer, editor/writing coach. Published in Boston Literary Magazine, Best of B.L.M., Chapbook, 2009 and Life with Objects, 2010. Working on first novel. Lived many years abroad in Greece and South Asia where, among other things, I learned the art of breaking rules creatively. Themes I tend to chew on consistently: fate and the consequences of action (or no action).

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image by hidlight. 

[glossolaliaflash]

Of Flowers That Dare to Dream by Zino Asalor

A wild flower was born in the cemetery, of all places she was born amongst the dead. Sired to forever brighten the days and nights of the un-living. As a toddler, her eyes spoke of journeys to lands unknown, but “home is home,” Mama said sternly. “Home is home”, Papa nodded in agreement.

She dreamt of how different the world would be if life was lived amongst the living, to be smiled at, smelt and to see the colours that rise and fall when a lady blushes. She dreamt…..but home is home.

Still she dreamt, "surely to sit like a Queen in the finest antique vase would be life indeed, last though it may, but a day?" What glory is greater than to share of her scent, sweeter than that of the reddest rose? She knows…she knows home can be made anywhere. She dreams what she knows; she dreams what no one knows.

And the day comes when she is plucked, lifted from the prisons of her birth, carried with caring hands as if she were the last egg in the world. “This must be the day,” she sang. A dream she knew yet a dream she knew not. She was dusted with the softest brushes, petted and kissed like a baby born in the midst of war. “This must be the day” ….she crooned herself to sleep.

Awakened to find other flowers in her bed, she sighs, she shrugs, she smiles: "Even the sky is shared by all stars, yet each one blinks and twinkles like eyes in a dream," a dream within a dream. As the ribbon is tied, her mind drifts back to Mama and Papa, still dancing their forced dance to the sad songs of the cemetery breeze, still at home. “Home is home," they always said. If only they could see me now in my black dress with pretty red ribbons. “O this is the day," she whistled and hummed!

And the car came, Babanginee’s car. Blacker than the darkest night, shining like a second wife, it was. The prize of the pack, the golden coin of the convoy, "how strange yet familiar," thought the little wild flower. "It must be a dream, undreamt. A dream within a dream."

So she went, placed ever so gently at the back, inside the case that carried the corpse that once was Babanginee’s bride. Touching both the sky and the coffin of her dreams in the same moment, as they made their way back to the land of her birth, the very prison from where fate had broken her out. She knew nothing of where she was and never came to understand why Mama said what she said, and why Papa nodded. She was in a car, finally! A car that carried a case, that bore a corpse, parked at the cemetery, still she sang “this is the day, this is the day," waiting patiently for her lady’s blush…a dreamer till the very end.

***

About the Author Zino Asalor Born: Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria Now Resides: Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria Online: www.onlyonezino.blogspot.com Bio: Zino is a writer of poetry and fiction. He loves to sneak underneath the flesh of life to steal glances at the interconnecting veins that run through us all; he finds them in simple stories, and words. He keeps dreaming of visiting Malaysia but has no idea why. Why Malaysia? Do you know? "Of Flowers That Dare To Dream" was featured on the blog naijastories.com. His fiction has been published by StoryTime Africa and Sentinel Nigeria amongst others.

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image by r3novatio.

[glossolaliaflash]

The World is Dripping in Mud by Rob Lavender

Red will leak. Wait and see what I tell you, boy. Every morning five past ten. Here he comes, wrapped in those bandages. Be-bopping in those draws he ain’t ever filled. Standing in the square sun, streaming through the kitchen window above that raggedy-ass table you bought from Timmy. What? Bring it on. Let me sing. Strap on that guitar, boy. Get in here. Don’t stand there in the Christian’s sun. He’ll be here. You just keep picking. That’s right. Lay it down. Keep that foot stomping. Just like you doin’. Make you ten pounds lighter. Make that rhythm in you come undone. Be swaying like Ray Charles until she gets taken home. Angels standing in their fresh garments, demanding to be heard. But don’t you dare stop. Keep playing. Walk it on out. Yeah, that snapping turtle got my ass. Clenched and didn’t let go until the thunder clapped like ten thousand Indians, raiding the fun, like bass don’t know shit about tenor. Not on the side of this cold-ass hill where our help come from. Leave him be. Come on back into this kitchen. He’ll lumber in directly. Don’t you worry your sweet little head. He’ll see your finger wagging. Put it down now. You want the man to see your foot more than your hand. So you keep smiling like you doin’. Ain’t no sugar in a brown-eyed girl. No sir. It’s the world dripping in mud. Wash it out now. Get that taste out your mouth. Gurgle in that swamp water. Spit. That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout. Now sing me a ballad like you want to be heard.

***

About the Author Rob Lavender Born: Columbia, Tennessee Now Resides: Decatur, Alabama Online: www.360westproject.com Bio: Rob Lavender works at a psych hospital where he teaches creative writing as therapy to suicidal adolescents. Each week his class publishes a chapbook of poetry and short stories. He earned an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. His work has appeared in Brevity, Controlled Burn, Front Porch Journal, and Bare Root Review.

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image by niimo.

[glossolaliaflash]

A-Z Blues by Dan Luby

An unassuming envelope, no return address, so he opened it.

"Bernie, I'm pregnant," the letter read.

"Could be yours, Bernie, I'm not 100%.

Do you know, I'm actually eating again?

Even cut out the whiskey, I can't anymore, because of the baby.

Four months along now and they can hear his heartbeat with a stethoscope.

Guess you heard about Tim, the accident and all, and I'm so sorry.

He's got some stuff here I could send you, pictures and things.

I'll send them to you, but I can't give you my address, you know why.

Just know that I don't hate you, Bernie."

Keeping his hands still was difficult, small tremors shook the pages.

Later he would regret it, but he bent the pages toward his nose, searching for her scent.

"My thought is, if he is yours, we should talk.

Now is bad, though, Bernie, I've met someone.

Oliver says he'll raise him up like he's his own son.

Pay what you can, when you can... he's definitely not Oliver's, if you're wondering."

Quiet indignation, and a cold, blank stare.

"Really, we need the money, and I know you're good for it.

So, here's the P.O. Box number:"

The number was as cold and impersonal as a number could be.

"Until things are settled and I get the money, Bernie, that's it.

Very little else to say.

When we talk it should be civil.

X-Rays have showed that I've healed well, and I do forgive you."

You can't do this. You can't.

Zero fight or will left, he reached for his wallet, a black and shiny invitation to the blues.

***

image by mystiscool.

[glossolaliaflash]

Kalik by Dan Luby

Mary and Stu, affluent and humble, weekly saw Kalik, a homeless psychotic. It was their wont to comfort the deprived woman with the overflow of their gilded cup: money, meals, and warm talk. On one such visit, Kalik revealed the fact that she had a child years before. Her shaky, spotted hands trembled with a yellowed photograph.

"Juniper," she told Mary and Stu, whose hearts bled. They left the sated Kalik, soon to be drunk from their generosity.

"Oh, Stu, we should find her. We really should." Stu's sense of importance soared. His eyes crinkled at their sides, as he smiled, his pleasure alloyed with pain. The well-connected couple had very little to do to find the young Juniper. She had been adopted at birth and lived in the neighboring town. Her last name was Esconza. She was 13. She agreed to travel by bus, the kindly Esconzas edgy but supportive. Kalik was, after all, her blood.

"Kalik, we have a surprise," Mary said, weeks later. Juniper, a summer dress blowing slightly in the breeze, stepped forward with flowers and great nerve. Kalik's menacing psychosis flared and she nearly tore the child limb from limb.

More weeks later, after Juniper's release from the emergency room, Mary and Stu apprehensively made their way in slow circles to Kalik's side of town and happened on her screaming at traffic.

"Why," asked Mary in a harsh whisper. Stu pulled her close, manly and protective. Kalik, eyes glassy and black as coal, stared.

"I saw my eyes in hers and I wanted the pain in us both to die. I'm her mother and I was teaching her!"

She then screamed a bloodcurdling yowl from the top of her lungs to let them know, all of them, that philanthropy is the Devil's work.

***

About the Author Dan Luby Born: Hartford, CT Now Resides: Seattle, WA (Actually "From": Florida, the Transient State)   Online: www.danluby.wordpress.com Bio: Recent Work History: 1978 - 1996: Child; Began to independently eliminate waste. Acquired essential cognitive abilities. Worked well with others. 1997 – 2002: Early Adult; Showed a keen interest in chemistry, specifically the reactivity of the blood-brain barrier to specific alkaloids. Published pieces in The Eyrie literary magazine. In an attempt to monetize my strategic niche, pursued and attained a B.A. in Philosophy, which provided forward socioeconomic ascendancy. 2002 – Present: Adult; Participated in requisite ¼ life crisis. Married a schoolteacher as a means of expanding my portfolio. General empire-building. Special Skills: Elaborate Swearing, Advanced Slumming, Creative Procrastination, and Microsoft Office Suite.

***

image by MYSOTiS. 

[glossolaliaflash]

Squatter by Kevin Frazier

At night he smoked in bed, tapped ash and cinders onto the tattered sheet and the beer-stained mattress.

He was still a squatter. They’d been kicked out, all the squatters, seven years ago. Now he lived in a trailer along one of the Berlin canals, but in his mind he had never left the squat.

With his free hand he touched his face. He fingered the long wood spike in his earlobe and the small gold hoop in his nostril. His black hair looked like ruffled crow-feathers. His skin was mottled and pocked, and the seam of a scar curved along his nose.

He kept smoking, lit a new cigarette as he felt himself falling asleep. He was a squatter, now and always. He was over there, squatting on the other side of the city. He wasn’t here, watching the cinders and ash drift to the sheet. He was on the squat, getting ready for the march, preparing to protest the German involvement in Afghanistan, testing out his insults for the hypocrite Greens.

A cinder, gold and faint, pulsed against the sheet, and he could smell some of the old cotton blend starting to burn. It didn’t matter. He was about to leave for the march.

***

About the Author Kevin Frazier Born: United States Now Resides: Helsinki, Finland Bio: I've published a novel and a nonfiction book about Central Asia, and my short stories have appeared in Fiction, The South Carolina Review, and many other places. I'm also a frequent book reviewer and essayist, with recent pieces in The Common Review and Open Letters Monthly.

***

image by loveiisparanoid.

[glossolaliaflash]

Hope Tied With Spiderwebs by Emily J. Lawrence

After the flood, the door opens to their last supper washed on the walls. Meatloaf shelved with books, bread caked to the T.V… A comb of yellow cake makes a hotel for the ants. The boy picks corn from the blinds while his mother walks to her bedroom and closes the door behind her.

She peels off her clothes and wrecks herself on the floor with the trees and telephone lines. She becomes dozens of bodies licking sand, pushed ashore by the pulse of the waters. Their burial service lies in the oil-black tape of a newsreel.

The boy kneels in soggy toilet paper in the bathroom. He drops a large ant into the toilet. Sprawling in the water, its legs row without form.

His mother’s limbs make sopping noises in the carpet. Hope is tied to her with spider webs. She sees it as a shattered light bulb by her head. She sees it as shards lying like ripped butterfly wings. She sees it as a dead fairy among the glass. Hope, a broken idea she knows she only half-believes. Yet, she sees it. Her arm beneath her, she rolls to her side; two maple leaves hold her naked backside with a drowning grip.

Meanwhile, the ant her son dropped in the toilet swims with God’s eye on it.

***

About the Author  Emily J. Lawrence Born: Hale Center, Texas Now Resides: Anderson, Indiana Online: www.emilyjessannlawrence.blogspot.com Bio: I'm a moleperson, digging inside myself for something worth preserving on the page. I want to write so that if the reader broke open the words, her hands would get sticky with the truth – and if she is willing to drink deeply, there'd be enough truth that she'd know something she hadn’t before. About me, and about herself. I endeavor to create sentences nobody has ever heard, metaphors never thought of, and characters who take over. My work is forthcoming in Relief: A Journal of Christian Expression and Luna Station Quarterly. I'm also the Assistant Editor for Prose Fiction at Literary Laundry.

***

image by Iamo.

[glossolaliaflash]

Wormholes by Walter Campbell

Andy casually tells me that the sole scientific justification for wormholes is that the idea of a wormhole doesn’t break any universal physics laws. He says it as though it’s not a big deal, as though it’s not completely earth shattering.

“You’re a liar,” I yell, jumping to my feet like a soldier in basic training. “And your mother’s quite loosely moraled,” I say, knowing I’ve just pulled off a brilliant movie move with my astounding insult, like smoking an antediluvian pipe, or traveling through spacetime. Andy jumps up just as militaristically, and slaps me for my indecent comments about his mother and his take on theoretical physics.

Seeing this, our middle school chemistry teacher rushes down the aisles.

“You two are out of line. How dare you talk about physics during chemistry class. As punishment,” she says with the whole class watching, and a few filming on their cell phones, “you’ll eat every page of this essay on black holes.” She pulls a fifty-page manuscript from her pocket, cuts it like a deck of cards, and shoves half at me and half at Andy. “Consume!” she yells, and we scarf down the work of a great mind.

Once we’ve finished, she tells us to continue our chemistry without another word on physics. The whole class stares, making sniveling, sneering, snide comments as they reach for beakers. It’s even worse than when I pissed myself in third grade after finding out that time was relative, because now not only do I look like a fool, but my friend—someone I care about immensely even though I don’t respect his scientific beliefs—does, too.

“I’m sorry,” I tell Andy. “You’re mother isn’t loose moraled or slutty in any way, and what you said about wormholes has some truth to it. I didn’t mean to get us in trouble or embarrass us in front of the whole class. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I accept your apology, but don’t worry about it. I’m not embarrassed,” Andy says, clearly unaffected by a stomach full of equations.

“How could you not be embarrassed?” I ask him.

“Well, because none of this is really happening, obviously.”

“What? How is none of this happening?” I ask, immensely confused.

“Have you ever heard of alternate universes?” he asks me with clever grin.

“I have,” I tell him.

“Well, this is one. In the universe I actually care about we’ve just been making solutions and talking calmly about Star Trek this whole time.”

“Oh. In that case,” I add, “your mother’s a slut.”

***

About the Author  Walter Campbell Born: Los Angeles, CA Now Resides: Philadelphia, PA Bio: Walter's work has been published in Toasted Cheese, Weirdyear, Vestal Review, and Eclectic Flash. A publication in Jersey Devil is forthcoming. He knows next to nothing about wormholes or alternate universes, and blames any inaccuracies on excessive sci-fi comic book consumption during his youth. All accuracies, however, are directly attributable to Carl Sagan.

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image by Teh-cHix0r.